If There’s Life Without Facebook, Send Me The Link!

It’s one minute to midnight and we are entering the last day of the year. Forget about Brexit, Trump, and violent men with yellow vests. Forget about the fact that we haven’t had a white Christmas for ages, and that the Japanese are hell-bent in chasing sharks. This time of year is about you and me, sitting in front of our computer monitors, asking that dreaded question that has no answer – “what have I done this last year, and what will I do better, next year?” Although the question forms the basis of what it means for you to be alive, there are two further questions that you must ask. Namely, “can there be life without Facebook?” and, “how much time have you spent on Facebook since this time last year?” If you know the answer to the first question, please send me a link so that I can find out for myself. As for the second, I don’t want to know the answer because it might be embarrassing. You know what I mean – it’s similar to the question, “how much time does the average person spend in the bathroom, per year?” Well, if you know the answer to that, just triple it.

I started with Facebook right after the UK voted to leave the EU. Well, I had to do something, so I started writing blog posts to vent my anger and avoid a full-scale depression. The former has gone away, largely thanks to the acquisition of a French passport. Luckily, I avoided the second, having realized that Brexit is just not worth the trouble of becoming depressed.

And then, I entered Mister Zuckerberg’s wonderful world of virtual reality, so akin to the real world and yet, so remote from it. Yes, I admit it. I use Facebook to distribute my writings, for what they’re worth and, in the thick mist of universal anonymity, I find out that I have more than a hundred followers, and 200 friends. Tell me what to do – call the police for the former, organise a party for the latter?

I’m not the sort of person who posts a picture of himself going to the gym, only to find out, once he’s been, that nobody has liked his post. Rather a waste of a gym session, don’t you think? Nor am I keen to divulge personal information. My news feed gets inundated with family pictures of people I don’t even know, and holiday snaps of places I never knew existed – and that is rather annoying, to say the least. Ah! Gone are the days where you took a snapshot at dinner time, waited a week to have it developed at your local chemist, and another month before you could show it to anybody else. I’ve managed to block most of the personal stuff, as I much prefer receiving links to articles that the sender hasn’t read, and that I won’t click on. I just wonder what the content of the Facebook meme, that is linked to an online article, actually tells you about the person sending it.

But by far the worst part of Facebook, of course, is the comments sections, containing the inner thoughts of other users. I cannot generalise, of course, but on the whole, people have so little to say and what they do say, they cannot spell. I suppose that I’m being a little harsh because the Facebook insults that I get affect me more than they should, being directed at something I have taken time to write. If someone doesn’t agree with me – fine – but why the insults? Another infuriating thing is that for the few conversations that have a semblance of interestingness, the other guy or girl just disappears into the wilderness of cyberspace. I ask myself if they got caught and reprimanded by their boss for time wasting, at work. On the subject of time wasting, how do the people at Facebook waste their time at work? On Twitter or Instagram, I presume.

The ruthlessness of the comments lies in the fact that they are anonymous and digital, even though the sender may be using his/her real name. Behind the safety of their computer monitors, and in the comfort of their own homes – or somebody else’s, depending upon their moral values – they can shoot you from anywhere on the globe, with a few taps on the keyboard. It just underscores the wonders of digital technology, well on its way to replacing paper threats and summons sent by recorded delivery post. But the digital world will never completely replace good old paper, because you may be able to insult someone via Facebook, but you can’t wipe your backside with an iPad.

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One Expat And His Blog

Welcome to CRYSTAL HORIZONS. The blog after the blog before. The "shares" have disappeared, but the posts haven't.
If you think that 2018 was eventful, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
This blog was originally about the EU and Brexit. Understandable because I’m half a British expat living in continental Europe (my other half is French). In my intro page I did mention that this blog is like cheese and will mature, and so it has... It has now acquired a new name - CRYSTAL HORIZONS.
So many things are happening in the world that it’s obvious that not everything revolves around Brexit. My opinions haven’t changed though, and I still think that smashing the EU door is certainly not the political answer to the UK's philosophical dream.
As for the blog, it still revolves around philosophy, politics and has a tinge of satire. Can philosophers and other learned individuals help me understand what the hell is going on?

Take Your Pick

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Having left the UK in 1984, I am beginning to wonder if my motherland is not the outward looking and relaxed land that I thought it was. I love the UK, don’t get me wrong. I can assure you that, on the 24th June, I was one of the most upset persons in the EU,...
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I thought, at first, that in endorsing the UK parliament’s right to vote for the triggering of Article 50, the High Court ruling was a good thing. Having heard Theresa May’s views that it wouldn’t change her timetable or attitude, and other politicians saying that they were going to vote for Brexit anyway, has made...
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It’s ironic that former prime minister David Cameron put forward a referendum on Europe that now threatens the very nature of the parliamentary democracy that let him propose it in the first place. Of course, whether Cameron had any choice in the matter remains subject for debate. But the fact of the matter is that...
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On December 24th 1951, a group of Catholic clergymen hanged and set on fire a Father Christmas effigy in front of at least 250 children in Dijon, France. Following the incident, the late French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss wrote an article entitled “Le Père Noël supplicié” (“The tortured Father Christmas”) in the literary journal...
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All of us remember the horrifying picture of a 3 year old Syrian boy found lying on a beach. The scene epitomised the situation for ordinary people in Syria. But he and others are no ordinary people. We are. We, including myself, all live in our protected personal bubbles and are only temporarily affected by...
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“Only one thing: this thickness and this strangeness of the world, that’s the absurd.” Albert Camus On June 16th 2016, the Labour member of Parliament, Jo Cox, was brutally murdered by Thomas Mair, an unemployed gardener. Although the perpetrator had a history of mental illness, he also had ties with extreme right-wing parties,...
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Now that she knows where the bathrooms are in number 10 (I’m assuming that there is more than one), it’s down to business for Theresa May. She really got us going with her stirring speech and, with only a few weeks to go until the dreaded day when she sends THE LETTER to Brussels,...
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On 23rd January, 2017,the Dutch centre-right prime minister Mark Rutte wrote an open letter which was widely published in the national press. As a non-Dutch national, I would like to respond to comments he made in that letter. The present post is based on my previous post written in Dutch. It wasn’t easy for me...
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This week, the UK parliament approved a bill giving Theresa May the authority to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, in accordance with the EU referendum result on June 23rd last year. Seven months on, and the fate of EU nationals living and working in the UK, as well as British nationals in other...
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2016 was marked by a sharp rise in populist politics and has culminated in the UK vote to leave the EU and the election of Donald Trump in the US. In 2017, the French presidential election race has already been marred by a political scandal involving the right-wing candidate and presidential front-runner, François Fillon. He is...
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In October 2016 the former UK premier Tony Blair wrote an opinion article in The New European newspaper. He appealed to the UK not to rush into Brexit without seriously taking into account the consequences of such a decision. Tony Blair compared Brexit with a house move. For the former prime minister, it is only...
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An international arrest warrant has been ordered for the former Peruvian president Alejandro Toledo amidst allegations that he received up to $20m in bribes from the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht. The former president would, in return, have granted a lucrative contract to build a transoceanic highway between Brazil and the Peruvian coast. Toledo would not...
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The fact that Theresa May, the UK prime minister, made an unprecedented appearance in the House of Lords speaks volumes over her respect for parliamentary democracy. It is now patently clear that the EU referendum that took place on June 23rd 2016 was flawed ever since the former prime minister, David Cameron, promised the vote...
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Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time once again for “Call My Bluff”. And here’s your host, Theresa May. Hello everybody, and welcome to this edition of “Call My Bluff”, a panel game in which three contestants give me a definition of a political word that I have never heard of. I must guess the true...
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The title of this post paraphrases something Margaret Thatcher said during the 1980 Conservative Party Conference. Having been asked on several occasions by the media whether she would perform a U-turn concerning her economic and social policies, she had always replied that she wasn’t one to change her mind. At the conference she spoke a...
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Books will soon be obsolete in schools. Scholars will soon be instructed through the eye. It is possible to teach every branch of human knowledge with the motion picture. Our school system will be completely changed in ten years. – Thomas Edison – 1913 You’ve got to give Thomas Edison credit for his vision. Of...
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Sometimes by pure accident you read about an act of violence in the news, that fills you with such disgust and hate for the perpetrators that you just feel like shouting your anger to the world. Today, quite by chance, I came across this news story from the Dutch television news website. The act of...
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In prohibiting entry to two senior Turkish politicians, the Netherlands has sparked a serious dispute with Turkey. The decision not to allow Turkish politics to be officially expressed on Dutch soil can only be justified if the decision to do so is based on moral principles that can be as universally applied as possible, and...
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The result of the Dutch parliamentary elections, that took place on Wednesday 15th March, is a victory for the current prime minister, Mark Rutte. Although his party, the VVD, remain the largest political party in the Netherlands despite losing 8 parliamentary seats, Mark Rutte may face difficulties in forming a working coalition. It is probable...
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March 29th 2017 will be remembered as the day the UK officially triggered Article 50 of the European Constitution, signifying a two year slog to disentangle itself from the European Union. I have no intention of browsing the glorifying headlines on the front pages of the UK tabloids. I’ll let the Brexiteers rejoice in their...
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Together we stand, and together we wait And there was I, thinking that we were utterly alone in our battle as UK expats, to avoid being cast into oblivion by the forces of evil from both sides of the channel. It now appears that an entire dependency is about to suffer the same fate as...
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It rains on the roof, like it rains on the stairs My grandmother’s house was no ordinary house. It was a mountain chalet on the outskirts of Nice, in the South of France. The colour of its turquoise entrance to the garden, and ochre yellow walls, had nothing to do with turquoise, and even less...
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The British Press: Responsible but not guilty? When the offices of the French satirical journal Charlie Hebdo were gruesomely attacked in January 2015, the world was shocked, and rightly so. The attack focused on the press, one of the most sacred institutions of our democracies. The terrorists also challenged something that most of us...
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I’ll be honest with you. Before writing this post, I had no idea what a “LGBT person” actually was. “In what sort of world is this guy living?”, I hear you ask. Well, I live in the same world as you, but the meaning of this dreadful label that has been tagged on the shoulders...
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Mes enfants, it’s fast approaching squeaky bum time in France, with the first round of the 2017 presidential election due on the 23rd April. The political situation in France is, as I see it, similar to that of 2002, when far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, father of present-day Marine, reached the second round to everybody’s...
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If I talked to you about a country that just had a dubiously run referendum, the result of which was so close, as to be invalid for such a huge constitutional change, you would probably be thinking of Turkey. If I then told you that the leader of this country will organise elections with the...
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A series of short posts highlighting interesting points arising during the final countdown to the French presidential election. (I) – Storm in a “Whirlpool” It’s what we call “l’entre deux tours” (between the two rounds) of the French presidential election. And I can just sit back behind my computer and relax. All I...
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Plato And Jeremy Corbyn: “Whose Idea Was This Anyway?” With the June election rapidly approaching, I’m going to dedicate a post to the current leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn. I know that my views don’t matter one iota, and, what’s more, I cannot even vote. Well, that should make you listen...
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(II) Marine Le Pen’s Splitting Headache Over Europe The situation at the Whirlpool plant, situated in the northern town of Amiens, underscores the nature of the combat between Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron. The fact that the American owners want to relocate the plant in Poland, is, for Le Pen, the epitome of...
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(III) Evolution And Decomposition Of French Politics The fact that there is no Republican candidate in the second round of the French presidential elections, coupled with the disintegration of the French socialists, underscores the fact that the French political landscape has undergone a seismic shift, for the first time in the long history of...
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(IV) Emmanuel Macron’s Late Night Out Up to now, compared to Marine Le Pen, I’ve been quite nice to Emmanuel Macron. Well, one thing’s for sure: nobody’s perfect I was fortunate enough to attend the Euro 2000 football championship final between Italy and France, that took place in Rotterdam. I was standing in the midst...
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Joan of Arc, having liberated France from English occupation in the 15th century, has become a symbol of ultra-nationalism expressed by the French National Front Party. The Little Prince, written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, is a poetic tale, in which a pilot stranded in the desert meets a young prince fallen to Earth from a...
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From time to time, there is such a build-up to a mid-week football match, that you cannot wait for the Wednesday night. The build-up to this week’s French presidential debate promised a night of high drama, philosophical insights and antipodal ideologies. Instead, I was forced to watch the debate on my iPad, my son having...
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